“Ay, would I though.”
Whereupon he was screamed at and rocked as unmercifully as any boat in a storm, until between laughter and vexation he promised all that they asked, and the four girls went away declaring their arms would ache for a week.
“Ye will not be able to make the dumb cake on Saint Mark’s Eve,” Gervase called after them, “and then, no chance for you to see your sweethearts at midnight.”
“No need for that, goodman,” answered the eldest and prettiest, “we know who they are already.”
So many holidays fell at that fair time of the year that the master grumbled his work would ne’er be done.
“May Day come and gone, ye shall have no more.”
But May Day itself could not be slighted, for long before sunrise the lads and lasses were out to gather May, or any greenery that might be got, and the prentices tramped through mud and mire, and charged the thickets of dense brushwood valiantly. Wat was covered with scratches, and a sorry object as they trudged home by sunrise, in order to decorate the house door with branches, and all the other boys and girls were at the same work, so that in a short time the street looked a very bower of May.
And now the days growing longer and the country drier, there was less danger from travelling, and a general desire in everyone’s heart to be doing something or going somewhere, or otherwise proving themselves to have some part in this world, which never looks so fair or so hopeful as at the beautiful spring season. Many of the neighbouring gentry rode into the city, and the ladies were glad to wear their whimsically scalloped garments, and their fine mantles, and to display their tight lacing in the streets instead of country lanes, as well as to visit the clothiers and drapers for a fresh supply; while their lords took the opportunity of looking at horses, playing at tennis, and some times, when much in want of ready money, disposing of a charter of liberties, to gain which the citizens were ready to pay a heavy fine.
Master Gervase had many visits from these lords and knights, and more work pressed upon him than he would undertake. My Lord of Devon had pretty well insisted upon his carrying out some change in his house at Exminster, where some forty years later was born William Courtenay, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, and Gervase was one day cutting the notches in a wooden tally, made of a slip of willow—which was the manner of giving a receipt—and handing it to the bailiff, when a tall man holding a little girl by the hand strode into the yard.
“It is Sir Hereward Hamlin,” Wat whispered to Hugh.